Towards the end of the 1970s, uncertain of my future, I went to David Mcallister the director of the Ethnomusicology Department at Wesleyan University for advice. David was an important anthropologist who I was fortunate to know. We spent an afternoon talking, after which he convinced me that I was much better suited to a future as an artist than anthropologist. If I wanted to pursue my interests in Archaeology and Anthropology, I should offer my services as a photographer for which I would be paid for the privilege of working with people active in their own research.

A few years later, my car broke down in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I stopped in to show my work at the art museum in hopes of selling a few prints to get back on the road. After a long conversation with the museum director, I was offered the job of project photographer for an ambitious project photographing Mayan art treasures in some of the great collections and at archaeological dig sites. I travelled for a year starting with over twenty cases of photographic materials. We travelled by air, car and boat to remote areas and lit much of the objects in Mayan Grass Huts, running lights from gas generators. I worked along some of the great writers and researchers on Mayan iconography and archaeology. This was the first in a series of dream travel assignments. I will always be grateful to the pitch perfect advice given me as a young man at the beginnings of my career by a great teacher and mentor.

Jade Plaque. Chiapas1983-85pure pigment printmultiple sizes

still life photograph from the book, Maya, Treasures of an Ancient Civilization.
Prices for prints and reproduction rights - contact Stuart Rome